How to create a value proposition that makes YOU stand out

Your value proposition is your foundation, without it marketing is an uphill battle

One of the most important foundations you need in your business is an awesome value proposition. It’s more than a statement. It’s a deep understanding of your unique value and the perfect customer for your offer. 

Your unique value and your unique combine with the perfect person for this product is what will make your product different from other products. Simply put: True value + right person = value proposition.

It has to feel clear to you and your customers. It needs to explain what you offer them and how you stand out from other businesses they could buy from.

I used to feel like a deer in headlights when someone mentioned value proposition. Even when I looked it up, it still didn’t make sense. When I wrote it out, it felt really flat.

Understand the value you deliver

I didn’t feel the connection to my own value proposition because I didn’t really know what my unique value was. I knew I loved what I did and that people loved working with me but I didn’t know exactly why they did and and couldn’t put a finger on the value they received from our work together.

Not knowing those two things had me stuck in branding and messaging changes for years with little impact. I ran big events and cultivated intimate groups but I didn’t know what was working. This was also, in part, due to my resistance to choosing the impact I wanted to make. 

I hadn’t been committed to the insights that I did have about my greatest assets. They were too bold for me. Combining my personal quest for inner peace with practical hands on business strategy seemed too out there. I was afraid of going too far and losing people. That distinction is what makes me deliver amazing results to my clients. 

Now I attract committed, loyal clients who are pre-destined for success because they lead with their values (and those values include making an impact doing good work in the world). They come to me because they want results. And they reinforce the success of my business because they do well.

Distinct value creates the conditions for growth

You can’t leverage what you don’t understand. Having a distinct and meaningful value proposition means that you understand the business you are in, how you deliver value and who you want to buy from you. If you are planning to grow you need to know all this. It’s impossible to build a strong business strategy around ambiguity.

Focus is essential to growth that can sustain itself. You need to have a clear idea of what products and programs you will create that are simple to promote and inline with your brand. Otherwise you’ll be hustling day and night to get noticed and eventually you’ll burn out.

Value propositions that turn heads

What I didn’t know in the first few years of my business and I definitely know now is that being out there with my truth is the only thing that works.

A good business includes differentiation – not being like everyone else.

A big company can deliver more than one result to many people but a micro-enterprise will be more successful providing value in one way that’s out of this world.

So here’s your chance to create a distinct value proposition designed to inspire you and intrigue prospects. You can start with a positioning statement that describes:

Your target buyer, the problem you solve, a small insight into how you do it, the outcomes you deliver and why you’re distinctly better than the alternatives.

Here’s the statement I used for a recent direct outreach campaign:

I work with health and wellness consultants who want a clear growth strategy. I help them double their income with more heart than hustle.

Breaking this down: 

My target buyers are health & wellness consultants. The result they want is to double their income. I help them do that by giving them a clear growth strategy (I’m a strategist so it makes that clear). What makes my approach different is that I help people do this with more heart than hustle.  

In this example, I left out the problem they were experiencing, mostly because it was an email campaign and we needed to keep it short. However, on a landing page, home page or any type of sales page I always spend time on addressing the problems they are experiencing right up front. It lets them know I understand what is going on for them.

Extras that strengthen your message

I could also put a metric in their to strengthen it and give it some oomph! I might do that in another part of my website or campaign.

Other companies explicitly mention their competition and state the reasons why they are the superior choice. A third way to strengthen the statement itself is by adding social proof. You can put in the proof of how you have delivered on what you promise. This might look something like “voted #1 in our industry by xyz magazine … “.  Many authors put “#1 bestseller” right in the book description. That’s another form of social proof.

If you want to take the next step you can  work on it with a copywriter to add sexy, fancy language to make it stand out and use it in your marketing campaigns. That’s up to you.

What do you do with your value proposition?

The core purpose for it is to ensure that everything you create revolves around your value proposition and delivers those promised results. It will also help to attract customers who share your values. (Those generally make good clients!)

Now it’s your turn. Extract your unique value, the results you want to get for people, how you’ll do it and what makes you approach unique and different so you can have a statement that will help guide all of your future initiatives and messaging and attract the right people to help you grow. 

Need some help? I live and breathe value and help my clients gain a tremendous amount of confidence in how they serve their tribe. Here’s how I can help you convert more prospects into thrilled customers.